Sock Free Hideaway

 SONGS THEY NEVER PLAY ON THE RADIO

 8. WORLD OF TWIST : Lessons not learnt.

PART 1

MY FAVOURITE band; the band that fill me with the warmest memories were undoubtedly the World Of Twist. I still haven't truly forgiven my sister for pilfering my Embassy tee and I can still recall the great sorrow I felt when Tony and Syd died so close together. Kindred spirits. WOT made great press and preceded all the others who came in their wake, that found success diluting their formula, by light years.

Their favourite Julian Cope album was also mine (yes, the one whose lead single charted for one week at number 76), and they still spun in a similar musical orbit as myself, despite driving their raw form of psychedelia, soul, kitsch, and rock through antiquated gear and E to make uniquely mind blowing music. Whereas my hackneyed poetry delivered on a bed of basic garage riff and cheap micro-dot wasn't even escaping my head. 

The highwater marks for me were Blackpool Tower Suite and a mind blowing gig at the Ritz Ballroom. Un-burnished psychedelia and a playful ode to prog welded together in giant wave washes before finally teasing in a fresh way to introduce the purest version of the Storm. ABC would've been proud. I played it over and over. When we talk of tunes today and say things like, great for flailing on the hammock during a sunny day, we clean forget that music used to make us feel fucking majestic. Every hair was standing on end during that gig and listening to that record. 

They looked, moved, and sounded truly amazing. It reinvigorated a desire to catch the train to Manchester and go back into nightclubs after getting banned from the Hangout a year earlier. I was supposed to be catching an overnight ferry to Amsterdam's Paradiso Club from there, but couldn't locate my passport from inside my own coat pocket and was pretty much refused entry thereafter. Every bouncer in Manchester, it seemed, had a cousin who'd died of drugs.  

Yep, I tried the Konspiracy a couple of times, but felt a bit too scared. Unfortunately, I also braved a train to Sheffield in March to watch them at the Leadmill, convinced I would meet like-minded folk to get me back home. I was instead freezing all night, until the first train arrived the morning after, too out of it to talk to anybody at the gig. Unlike the compos mentis who revelled in Kick Out the Jams, I just thought 'oh, shit' as my brain had shut off the receptors in my ears. Lesson not learnt. 

 

Their LP Quality Street sort of plopped and was hugely disappointing. As many of the songs were confected pop by nature, they needed a production that rubbed against them, to add a bit of menace, more attune to live renditions. Not the Grid, who attempted a DNA style dance makeover. Whereas DNA's treatments tended to add space and value, the Grid just added a sugary overcoat to songs with the potential to be far better and basically buggered them up. 

 

250k was a lot of money to waste back then. A great sleeve, though. Had the Storm gone top 20 I'm sure things would've been different. Hannett gave them an edgier sound, but their preferred choice, the legendary Keith Mansfield  a Tony Blackburn favourite, may have fully realized their vision, had he not turned them down to tend his garden.  

The Mondays lad banter was wearing thin, so the comparative sophistication and eclecticism of a dance scene fed by the mere remnants of indie-dance, US house & garage, Balearic beats, and rave was the preferred social backdrop of choice for both myself and WOT. They were Hacienda veterans, but after cutting their teeth live at Isadora's with the seminal line up; they took up near residency in the Boardwalk. 

PART 2

WITH HINDSIGHT, the Boardwalk's bouncers were probably dressed better than anyone in the place, but back then WOT oozed style. Most of us were caught wearing ill-fitting clobber, more synonymous with the era. I recall the first-floor being like a sweaty gym full of chain smoking skinny folk in wrong fitting shorts all freaking out to suspect PA's by the likes of Sub Sub and Hypnotone. And an ever smiling DJ Tin-Tin who spun overplayed shit like Play that Funky Music and Back By Dope Demand. A very likeable chap when he wasn't DJing. 

Whereas upstairs a less likeable but more impressive John Robb would glare at folk, looking  like a constrained punk rocker or someone having about 20 light bulb moments all at once. Tony Ogden added to the intensity, saying things like 'don't buy that new single' with a stern expression. A born comic, he was also prone to fits of contagious laughter, usually after sharing his own wry observations. It was all, not as Bernard Sumner wrongly noted a 'bit we are weird' but rather, very fucking wired. 

After attending many Most Excellent related nights and anticipating massive things from Circus, that evolved out of Glitter Baby, a new Saturday night at the State, I found myself in the queue with Tony on  its opening night and despite his disappointment with the album he was looking forward to headlining the Academy. In my typical wrong headedness, I assumed walking in with him would give me kudos. However, Ross Mackenzie, for the one and only time, instead turned me away. 

We dejectedly relocated to Legends propping up the bar, and I was truly gutted. Probably has gutted at missing Circus as he was playing back their album for the first time. We retired to my sister's car and discussed Elvis's Love me Tender which we decided was better than the Memphis era. Whilst he rolled  the biggest spliff I have ever seen, that he then proceeded to smoke all by himself. The only other person selfish enough to do that in my company, albeit with dinky joints, was Nigel Pivaro, or Terry, as we then called him.  

Surprisingly, he took up my invite to attend Luvdup, where he danced manically in full Saturday night attire in front of a big mirror like he was in a video shoot and not a mid-week party in the Venue. As it was a school night, I could only manage a slight shuffle and felt uncomfortable. 

The dance scene that kick-started Jockey Slut and many a career, in retrospect, did WOT no favours. Fluke whose single Philly was euphoric and a game-changer, instead remixed She's A Rainbow into a whimper and a fitting footnote for a year of wasted opportunity and money. Lessons not learnt. Nothing epitomises this cruel transfer of power more than a Paradise Factory, Jockey Slut night where the Dust Brothers, triumphantly, and in an act of unintentional irony, span The Mondays glorious WFL Hannett version whilst a dishevelled Tony, replete with full beard sat slumped over in the corner, with Julia (MC Shells) unable to pull him together. 

In time, we all take our turns at being triumphant and then slumped over, I guess, but the WOT took their turn far more intensely and with a lot more style than anyone else.